Haymitch's Family
by C.Queen
Summary: Haymitch lost all his blood family decades ago thanks to the Capital. But sometimes new families can be made not of blood connection, but of love. A simple look at a day with Haymitch and his honorary family.


Disclaimer: As always I own nothing but the original characters and the situations all characters find themselves in. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy.

Haymitch's Family

His chair squeaked as he leaned back in it, which was fitting since his own body did the same whenever he lowered him into the thing. They were both getting on in years, and they had all the busted parts to prove it. He could replace the chair of course, his housekeeper had been nagging his ear off about his outdated everything, but he liked things the way they were. There wasn't a lot of stuff in his house, but what there was still served their purpose and he didn't give a God damn about style or having the latest and best and never had.

Scanning the room around him Haymitch knew he should find something to do, a book perhaps or a walk for the sake of the health he really didn't give two damns about, but he just didn't have the energy or motivation.

It was one of THOSE days.

He didn't know a victor who was still sane and in touch with their conscience that didn't have them. Those days when the memories reached out, took him or her by the throat, and like a rabid dog sought to tear them to pieces and remind them of just how easy a life could end. How disposable you were in the grand scheme of things.

They all had their ways of dealing with those days, though his had changed drastically.

Most of the time he knew it was for best, the fact that he'd stopped drinking. That he wasn't numbing himself that way anymore, to the point where he was like a feral creature when he went without. There was video footage to prove it too, whenever he was in danger of slipping off the wagon again. He'd done that a lot in the decade that had followed his forced sobriety, falling off and on the wagon again and again, each time lasting longer but inadvertently giving in sooner or later.

He hadn't had a drink in eight years, two months and thirteen days.

Nowadays he spent days like this shut up in his place if he could help it, though that usually wasn't an option. His housekeeper would inadvertently tattle on him, or a Mellark would drop by to see him and that would be that. He'd either have his only two living tributes on his hands or he'd be dragged down to the bakery if Peeta was busy and forced to help out there until his mood improved or he'd scared away all the customers and the blond closed the shop for the day in exasperation.

Seeing as his housekeeper was due in about an hour, Haymitch figured he had just slightly less than that to pull himself together so to speak.

Or so he thought up until he heard a familiar voice calling out for him as well as the sound of little feet running as fast as they could across his hardwood floors.

Love swamped Haymitch as he got to his feet with a great deal more strength and purpose then he'd gotten off them. He was halfway across the room when the door opened and there he was, his namesake and godson with a wide grin and bright blue eyes.

"Grandpa!"

Running across the room Mitchie grinned as he was scooped up into his grandfather's arms, cuddling in as Haymitch returned the greeting with a big hug and kiss for his favorite person.

Following her son inside at a much more leisurely pace, Katniss Mellark was dressed for hunting and scanned the room as she entered, no doubt looking for signs of trouble before meeting his gaze.

"Hey ya, Sweetheart." Drawling it out Haymitch could see that she saw the shadows in his eyes, she didn't miss much there, but unlike Peeta Katniss wasn't the sort to pressure him to talk about his feelings and shit like that. They both considered that Peeta's job, and one they wished he'd slack off at once in a while.

"Haymitch. Have you had lunch yet?"

"Was just about to put something together actually." Not being blind he'd already spotted the cloth bag dangling from her hand and had figured she was bringing him something. Lunch, he assumed, not at all bothered by the fact that Peeta constantly tried to get him to eat food that was remotely good for him. Blondie was a damn good cook after all, and it made the kid happy to feed people. A happy Peeta wasn't visiting him with shadows under his eyes and a haunted air about him.

"I eat with you, Grandpa. Mommy said."

Pleased at the news Haymitch lifted a questioning eyebrow in Katniss's direction. "I suppose you'll be joining us too?"

"No. Actually there's another reason why I'm here aside from playing delivery girl." Motioning for him to follow her with a jerk of her head, Katniss explained as she headed for the kitchen. A group of officials from Districts 7, 10 and 11 were coming for a meeting and naturally she was being forced to attend. Unfortunately the meal planned for the delegates had hit a snag in the form of a fire that had laid waste to the meat that was scheduled to be served for the main course. Thus she was not only being forced to attend the stupid thing in the first place, but now she was being sent out into the woods to find some fresh game to be hastily cooked for their guests.

Which brought her to the reason she was there in the first place. "So I need to go and someone needs to watch Mitchie for us. Peeta can't do it because he's helping them with the desserts and you know how Mitchie is around frosting. So could you watch him and pick up the other one from school and bring them both down to the bakery? Peeta should be done by then and that way you can be out of there before the politicians arrive and maybe decide they want to see you too. Unless you want to stick around for the food."

Clutching his grandfather's shirt Mitchie stared up at him beseechingly. "I stay with you, kay?"

"Definitely okay." He reassured him before nodding in Katniss's direction. "It's no problem, she get out at the normal time?"

"Yes."

"All right then. Go hunt and leave us guys to our lunch. We're hungry."

"Hungry! Hungry!"

"Just don't be late picking her up." Handing over the bag Katniss smirked when Haymitch informed her that she shouldn't get her braid in a knot, he was never late picking her daughter up from school. "You were three months ago."

Surprise was written all over his face. "She snitched on me?" He couldn't believe it.

"She didn't, her teacher did. She called Peeta in just to tell him that she didn't think you were responsible enough to watch the kids for us." Katniss let that sink in for a moment. "It's rare for him to lose his temper, but he lost it enough that he felt he had to go back and apologize the next day for telling her off. Our darling daughter had to apologize for telling her off too, for calling her teacher dumb since you're her favorite babysitter."

Hiding her amusement as color flushed over his cheeks, Katniss came over to give her baby a parting kiss, who, just like his father, always insisted on one, and then headed out the way she'd come knowing Mitchie couldn't be in better hands.

)

A few hours later, with Mitchie perched on his shoulders, Haymitch headed out to pick up his second charge, determined to get to the school early just to show Flora's teacher how responsible he could be. The old bat, ratting him out like that. He hadn't been that late, and he'd had a good reason at the time. Sort of. He'd had to take an afternoon nap after a headache inducing call from Trinket, and he'd slept later than he'd meant to. Could've happen to anyone.

A yawn from above had Haymitch breaking into a smile automatically. Mitchie didn't care to nap, so in general he just let the kid run himself ragged and just waited for him to pass out. Hence the fact that the boy had only woken up about fifteen minutes ago.

The waves and called out greetings they got as they walked by were normal and expected now. Once upon a time people had left him alone and vice versa, but those days were long gone. He'd gone from being Haymitch Abernathy, District 12's only living victor and town drunk, to just Haymitch, honorary father of Peeta and Katniss Mellark, and grandfather of the Mellark children. And that was actually how people saw him, as weird as it was. Once, when he'd had to go to another district for some heart surgery, Katniss had gone with him since Peeta hadn't been able to leave the bakery and someone needed to stay with the kid. Some of the nurses and doctors had assumed she was his daughter and he'd overheard more than one discussion on how they were just alike and how his 'wife' must have left the family long ago, unable to stand sharing a house with the two of them.

It was hard to say whether he or Katniss had been more insulted.

Seeing the school buildings in the distance, Haymitch's smile dimmed, though it didn't leave his face entirely. What a change a few decades could make sometimes. In his days before the seventy-forth Hunger Games you wouldn't catch him dead anywhere near this place or the larger building near it that was for the older kids.

Kids that would have been eligible to be reaped if such practices still existed. So no, he'd avoided this place even when he'd been drunk as a skunk.

He'd dropped out of school when he'd returned from his own games. Not because he hadn't enjoyed school, because actually he'd loved it when he was a kid. No, he'd stopped going because the boy tribute in his first year as mentor had been a good friend of his dead little brother's. He'd watched both tributes die on the first day and after that hadn't been able to bear the idea of knowing the sacrifices he would be sending off to their deaths.

Better to draw away from everyone, severe what few ties he'd had that point since the Capital had already stripped him of the people that had mattered most to him. The less contact with human pain the better, he'd had more than enough of his own.

And so arriving at the school right on time Haymitch did his best to ignore his surroundings, listening to Mitchie ramble on about how he'd get to go to school someday just like his big sister.

He wasn't surprised to see that Flora was one of the first students out of the little school when it let out, the kid hated going to school with a passion. Just like her mother Flora was all about hanging out in nature, getting dirty, and in general running wild with often unholy glee.

It had been Peeta who'd suggested sticking the kid with such a girlie name, one that didn't suit the tomboy in the slightest and was impossible to shorten. In Peeta's defense he'd wanted to give her a name that honored Katniss's sister and that girl, Rue, but it had not been one of bread boy's brightest ideas. Then again, many would argue that the Mellarks decision to name the toddler on his shoulders after him had been a grave disservice to the boy too. As a direct result they all called the boy Mitchie for short, and pretty much everyone called Flora Spunky unless she was in trouble. The nickname had been Finn Odair's idea, the boy had given it to her when she was about Mitchie's age and they'd all agreed it fit.

"Grandpa!"

Waving at her Haymitch smiled as she came bulldozing towards him, other kids instinctively getting out of her way. She was dressed in her preferred coveralls and T-shirt, the multiple pockets no doubt filled with all sorts of odds and ends that she'd collected on her various adventures.

"Hey, Spunky." Mitchie chirped from his perch, waving too. "Grandpa take us home."

"Okay." Slipping her hand into her grandfather's Flora looked up at him questioningly. "How come? Where's Mom?"

"Your mom had to go hunting. And now, don't pull that face on me, it's not like she could take you out of class just so you could come too. She had to get some meat for some big shindig and she couldn't wait around for you. Besides, it was serious hunting, you know you aren't allowed to go that deep into the forest yet."

Peeta had put his foot down strongly there and refused to budge no matter what his wife had said or promised. Normally the man pretty much trusted Katniss to know what she was doing when it came to the woods, but the man had proven to be even more overprotective of the kids than Katniss.

Of course the two had a very different way of coping with that need to guard their children against the evils of the world. Katniss's idea was to make her kids as badass as she could make them so that they'd be able to handle anything thrown at them, while Peeta tried to keep them close and where he could see them as much as possible. On bad days Katniss had to all but sit on him when Flora wanted to visit or sleep over at one of her friends' houses.

"Well let's get you two to the bakery."

"Okay." They chimed back.

)

The walk to the bakery didn't take that long, Flora chattering like a mockingjay the whole way there as she recounted everything interesting that had happened to her since they'd last spoken. She was still telling him all about the rabbit she'd apparently chased all over the Seam the day before when they arrived at their destination, the bell hanging over the door signalling their arrival in the otherwise empty shop.

He heard Peeta coming out from the back, the boy had had a heavy tread even before he'd lost the leg, and set Mitchie down on the wooden floor just as the boy's father came into view with a big smile on his face, his blue eyes lighting up as they always did at the sight of his children.

Running over to give their father big hugs the two children squirmed after a few moments, both wanting their afterschool treat.

Understanding that Peeta gave them one last squeeze and then let them loose, turning his attention to Haymitch while the kids turned theirs to the three kinds of cookies available in the display, debating which one to have since they were only allowed one each. "Thanks for watching Mitchie and picking Spunky up. You want something too?"

"I wouldn't mind a cookie, I suppose."

"I'll get it." Grabbing the two cookies she wanted most and couldn't decide between, Flora broke each cookie in half and then placed one of each kind on a napkin. Then she hurried around the counter to present her grandfather with one of the napkin wrapped pieces with the explanation that now he got to try both.

"Thanks, Kiddo." Amused, Haymitch bit into the first piece with Flora at his side, the little girl now stuck debating with herself as to which kind she wanted to eat first.

After getting glasses of milk for everyone Peeta joined them in sitting at one of the two tables he had set out for those who wanted to eat their treats inside the bakery. "So how's it going, Haymith?"

Briefly Haymitch wondered if Katniss had given her husband a heads up, then decided she wouldn't have taken the time to double back this way when there was hunting to be done. And he was good now, so it wasn't even a lie when he said he was doing good and asked how the baking had gone for the dinner thing.

Blowing out a breath Peeta rolled his eyes. Quickly he summarized the chaos of putting this whole thing together, especially since the mayor couldn't seem to remember that even though things were loads better than they'd once been this was still District 12 and fancy, elaborate dinners were not their thing. Plus it wasn't like they were hosting the districts that had once produced the Careers, who put on lavish affairs and expected everyone else to do the same. But no, most of his comments and suggestions had fallen on deaf ears, which was why his wife had had to go hunting in the first place. The people in charge of the main course had tried to go too fancy with the preparations and had ended up starting a fire instead.

This led them to talking about all the ridiculous parties they'd been forced into attending over the years, comparing horror stories until Peeta's voice died off in mid-sentence, his attention having been snagged by something outside the window.

Make that someone, Haymitch thought to himself as he watched the incredible, never ending love that come over Peeta's face, which changed the whole man's aura as the younger man got to his feet with a quick promise that he'd be right back.

And he was, with two small cheese buns on a plate before the bell sounded again and in came Katniss with a scowl on her face, though it disappeared pretty quickly once she saw them and the snack waiting for her.

"No luck?"

"Oh I had luck, I just didn't get the venison Mr. Mayor was expecting. Like I can just magically summon them to me at will." Rolling her shoulders Katniss walked over and took a seat on her husband's knee rather than retrieve another chair. There wasn't room for that and Peeta liked this for some reason. And since they'd both had stressful days, and stress upped the chance for nightmares, Katniss figured it was in their best interests to stick together for the rest of the evening. "So what were you guys talking about?"

Peeta grinned. "Comparing party horror stories."

"Yeah, I guess you'd have more of those, huh?" Katniss actually gave Haymitch a pitying look before she reminded them of an incident that had happened three years ago at one of the parties thrown in honor of the birth of the Mockingjay's second child.

And of course the kids wanted to hear all about it, having been too young to remember, and so the three adults took turns adding to the running commentary as they gave their version of the great exploding cake story, much to everyone's delight and laughter.


End file.
